News

Developers' No. 1 Worry? Being Replaced by Artificial Intelligence

• By David Ramel
• March 9, 2016

Developer-related research company Evans Data Corp. is out with new research revealing the fear of being replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) is the No. 1 worrisome concern of developers.

"When asked to identify the most worrisome thing in their careers, the largest plurality, 29.1 percent, cited 'I and my development efforts are replaced by artificial intelligence,' " the company said in a statement yesterday. "This was significantly more worrisome than platform issues, such as their targeted platforms becoming obsolete, which was the second most cited worry at 23 percent, or that the new platform they're targeting doesn't catch on (14 percent)."

Other concerns included becoming old without a pension, being stifled at work by bad management and seeing skills and tools become irrelevant. The fear-of-AI concern was reported by survey respondents coming from a cross-section of industries and platforms, but Evans identified one primary common denominator among respondents: They were more likely to describe themselves as being loners rather than team players.

"Another dimension to this finding is that over three-quarters of the developers thought that robots and artificial intelligence would be a great benefit to mankind, but a little over 60 percent thought it could be a disaster," said Evans CEO Janel Garvin. "Overlap between two groups was clear, which shows the ambivalence that developers feel about the dawn of intelligent machines. There will be wonderful benefits, but there will also be some cataclysmic changes culturally and economically."

Evans didn't provide further information, as it was teasing its for-sale Developer Marketing 2016 survey, which polled more than 550 developers.